Daytona rain left TV ratings bump high and dry

Nobody from NASCAR would ever come right out and say this, so I will. One factor behind why the plug was pulled so fast on Sunday night's Daytona 500 was television ratings.

Fox Sports announced the ratings results Tuesday and the race got a 9.2 national rating with a 19 share. That means 9.2 percent of all households were tuned to the race at an average point during the telecast, and that 19 percent of households where the television was in use was watching Daytona.

Fox points out that the average viewership of 16 million was higher than the average viewership for the Final Four (15.4 million viewers), Beijing Olympics (15.2 million), 2008 NBA Finals (14.9 million), Kentucky Derby (14.2 million) and the final round of The Masters (13.1 million) and US Open (12.1 million). Last year's Indianapolis 500 drew 7.2 million viewers.

But here's where the rain comes in. Last year's race got a 10.2 rating and had 17.8 million viewers. Part of that was because the rating grew from 10.4 to 12.1 in the final half-hour of racing. It stands to reason that more viewers would show up for the finish of the race. That's one reason the 500 was started at 3:40 p.m., so that it would end around 7 p.m. at the beginning of prime time.

This year, the rain came just after 6:30. The rating hadn't yet begun to build as rapidly as it might have. And when the racing stopped, Fox and NASCAR knew that people all across America were tuning out. Even if the race had restarted, it was going to be at least a couple of hours before it resumed because it would take that long to dry the track.

If Fox continued with its coverage through a rain delay of that length, viewership would have plummeted and the whole average rating would have dropped, too. By ending the broadcast as quickly as possible, Fox minimized the loss of ratings as much as it could.

Does that mean that somebody from Fox told NASCAR to pull the plug? Or even asked for that to happen? Not necessarily. But television is an important part of the NASCAR business equation, and the people making the call on whether the race would be resumed are part of the NASCAR business leadership. They understood that viewers were clicking away or would be if it appeared a long delay was in order.

NASCAR had plenty of other reasons to make the decision it did. There are a lot of bad things about a decision to resume a race at 10:30 or 11 p.m. -- or even later. You've got fans parked everywhere around the track and you need people to help them get out of there. You have major roads closed off in anticipation of the mass egress following a race. In this case you had information suggesting it might keep raining for a while, too. Television wasn't the only factor. It might not have even been a major factor. But it was a factor.

The race had the highest ratings in Greenville, S.C., with a 21.2. Greensboro was second at 19.9. Charlotte was sixth behind those two as well as Dayton, Indianapolis and Knoxville. The rating in Charlotte was a 15.6.